The Season of Living Dangerously - by Robert Kopecky (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected virtually every aspect of life in America, and Major League Baseball in 2020 was no exception. From the day in March when MLB announced postponement of the season, to the commencement on July 23 of a 60-game "regular" season, through the completion of the World Series, this was a baseball season unlike any other.

The Season of Living Dangerously records the views of a lifelong baseball fan as he watched this unique season unfold-games played in empty ballparks, new rules implemented to speed up play, Covid-19 cancellations, players and management openly expressing their views on racial inequity in America, the postseason expanded to allow over half the teams to participate, and the World Series held for the first time at a neutral site.

This account of the 2020 season addresses the conflicting feelings many fans had about whether the truncated 60-game schedule could be considered a legitimate season and whether the games should be played at all while the pandemic persisted around the country. But it also reflects a fan's appreciation for the things that make baseball rewarding to watch as he experienced the strangest of baseball seasons.

Review Quotes

"Robert Kopecky's The Season of Living Dangerously is an engaging diary of Major League Baseball's pandemic-shortened season in 2020. Kopecky's amiable and thoughtful prose reminds you that, more than any other sport, baseball is a game of conversation. He has a natural feel for its ambling rhythms, a sharp ear for its poetry and wit, a keen eye for the revealing statistic, and contagious affection for all manner of characters in the game - all-stars, working stiffs, eccentrics, and scribes. Most rewarding is Kopecky's running dialogue between baseball's past and present as he documents what was the strangest, most unsettling season in baseball history, yet one that also offered reassurance that whatever else is wrong with America, we still have baseball. Thank God." - Mark Stryker, author of Jazz from Detroit (University of Michigan Press)

"Kopecky writes with a passion for the sport cultivated over many decades, as well as deep knowledge of the game's complex statistics, sabermetrics, and unwritten rules. His book provides a thorough account of perhaps the strangest season in baseball's 150-year history, one that fans will find both meaningful and enduring, particularly after the pandemic has ended and life has returned to something resembling normal." - BookLife